Britain's James Ellison will make a shock return to the MotoGP paddock in 2012 after signing to ride for Paul Bird's CRT team in 2012.
The Kendal man will team up with fellow Cumbrian Bird, who is also running a British Superbike outfit next year, to ride an Aprilia RSV4-powered bike but in which chassis it will be placed is yet to be confirmed.
Ellison has experience in MotoGP, riding for the Tech3 Yamaha team in 2006 and was the first rider to switch bikes under then-new flag-to-flag rules. He also rode for the ill-fated WCM team who were lobbed out of the 2005 series for using a production R1 motor in the prototype-only class.
"We want to be as much of an all-British team as we can. James has a lot of experience in developing and setting up bikes and he has been in the MotoGP paddock before in a similar situation so he is ideally-placed to do a great job for us," said Bird, speaking to bikesportnews.com this afternoon.
"There are still a lot of details to get sorted out but everything is looking very rosy. We're highly-optimistic about being able to run at the top of our game and as soon as James has his crew around him, we can plan the test schedule."
